Four Letter Words
by Mirax Corran
Summary: Caroline, her convoluted life, and the four letter words she struggles to say. "But lust is only five letters different from bloodlust, and Caroline wants to do more than just know better, she wants to be better."


**Title:** Four Letter Words  
**Author: **Mirax Corran  
**Fandom:** Vampire Diaries  
**Genre: **Character study, bit of angst, bit of romance  
**Rating:** K+ for language  
**Word Count:** 2,199  
**Timeframe:** After 2.11 By The Light of the Moon, with spoilers.  
**Characters:** Caroline, mentions of others  
**Summary:** Caroline thinks about her life sometimes.  
**Notes:** This was theoretically going to be a response to a prompt for "Vampire Diaries, Caroline/Matt, _something always brings me back to you_," but then it kinda spiraled out of control and turned into something else entirely.

_Disclaimer: The Vampire Diaries in no way belongs to me (which makes me sad cause if it did I would _obviously_ be super-brilliant) and I am not being paid for this endeavor. _

Four Letter Words

Long before she acquired a secret of the blood-sucking variety, Caroline had suspected that she'd be happier living in a big city – some place where she could reinvent herself more easily, with a school big enough that not everyone knew her as silly vapid Caroline-the-sheriff's-daughter.

Well, she ought to move to a city like that someday. An upside to being stuck as a teenager for eternity, maybe?

At the time being, though, she would happily settle for anywhere big enough that there was more than one restaurant suitable for hanging out.

She knew Matt's schedule – the one he usually stuck to, anyways – so it was easy enough to avoid him in theory. But in practice, that didn't work so well. Because he was sometimes there when he wasn't working (cause of that whole only-one-restaurant thing). Because he changed his hours around. Because she had a social life, too. Sort of.

Because sometimes just the thought of seeing him was too tempting.

She knows better than to go too much, she really does. Even if Stefan hadn't put the fear of god into her, all the horrible things she'd done when she was out of control would have. Matt makes her dream and wish and _want_.

It's the _wanting_ that's dangerous.

No matter how distracting her companions are – Elena and their eternal chitchat about all those things that are everything and nothing all wrapped into a messy ball of friendship verging on sisterhood, Stefan's heartwarming or maybe heartbreaking stories, her mother's … okay, that one's not distracting, not anymore – but it wouldn't matter if the most fascinating person ever were across the table from her, part of her mind would still be stuck on Matt, remembering and _wanting_ so very much.

But lust is only five letters different from bloodlust, and Caroline wants to do more than just know better, she wants to be better. It doesn't take much. A bit of whiskey to dull the wanting, squared shoulders and a painted-on smile to mislead everyone (of course she's over Matt; she's Caroline Forbes, queen bee, she was over him before they broke up).

Maybe the astute person would point out that five letters is nearly a fifth of the alphabet and that's a pretty big difference. But Caroline's a little bit of a perfectionist and it's still too close for comfort.

She takes refuge instead in old sayings. Over and over and over she reminds herself that it's better safe than sorry and that she can fake it till she makes it.

It works.

Sometimes.

For everything else, there's Damon's booze to steal. Or MasterCard.

* * *

Caroline thinks about Tyler sometimes.

It would easy, with him, she knows. No secrets, no lies. He knows she'll never age; she knows where he goes once a month; maybe they could go bunny-hunting together or something. (Do werewolves like their meat rare?) Her mother would disapprove, sure, but when _doesn't_ her mother disapprove? She's seen him so scared he can't speak, shaking on the ground; she's seen him so broken he doesn't even have the power to cry.

(In that moment, she loved him a little.)

She's seen all of him, literally and figuratively, but he hasn't seen her. He hasn't heard her tipsy ramblings or seen her struggle to become more than she was. All Tyler knows is that, somehow, ditzy Caroline Forbes turned into badass vampire Caroline Forbes.

But Caroline's not always in control and in charge and put together. Sometimes she's silly or lonely or dumb or shallow like a kiddie pool. She's okay with all that, really, because she knows that she's smarter than she is silly and stronger than she is lonely.

(Even so, she needs hugs and laughter and people because strength alone can't overcome loneliness.)

And she's a little scared of Tyler. She's scared because he's lost so much so quickly – and he was already unstable before Vicki and the Mayor and Mason; she's scared because one wrong move from one of them and she's got chills and then agony and then insanity; she's scared because she's always suspected that he tried things with Vicki that start with R and rhyme with cape, and that's a type of been-there-done-that she's never going back to if she has anything to say about it.

And dammit, she's going to have something to say about it.

* * *

Caroline thinks about Damon sometimes.

Mostly, she plots his downfall or his excruciatingly painful death. Often, she wishes that he'd been bit instead of Rose; Rose who spent all those years running and was so scared and all she really wanted was to see the day again.

(Remembering just that one time she was stranded in her own home by the sun, isolated and crying, is enough for her to understand exactly where Rose's longing comes from.)

She hates Damon, though, she really does. He's manipulative and cruel and he did that starts-with-R-rhymes-with-cape thing to her and then he tried to kill her. Her hatred is justified and she knows it. If someone drove a stake through his heart today, Mystic Falls would be a better place – one lying rapist bastard down for the count.

But she doesn't do it and she doesn't ask Bonnie to do it (even though Bonnie would, she really would, especially if Caroline asked her because that's what best friends do, they take revenge on your behalf even if they hate you a little bit).

It takes her ages to figure out why she can't do it even though he would have.

One day, standing in the shower, everything clicks into place in her mind. She remembers with blinding clarity watching The Fellowship of the Ring snuggled up with Matt, and hearing the old guy say that people shouldn't eagerly deal out death in judgment, because even the very wise cannot see all ends.

Hating him for trying to kill her is easy, so easy, at least until she starts to think about it. Because he wanted to kill her so that she wouldn't kill other people (granted, mostly so that the trail of bodies wouldn't out him and Stefan, but even that was new). Sometimes – oftentimes – she thinks he's changing just a little; he's less vicious and manipulative, more selfless and occasionally even kinder.

It's all for the wrong reasons, she knows, all about pretense and Elena and some twisted thing he thinks is love because he's never been in love, not really. Even so, she sees pieces of her own struggles in him and it's hard to hate that. Maybe the wrong reasons will become the right ones, maybe he'll learn that love isn't just obsession and possession and the occasional stupidly daring grand gesture.

Besides, Stefan gave her the benefit of the doubt, trusted that she could learn to control herself, and passing that on – even to Damon – feels like the right thing to do.

* * *

Caroline thinks about Stefan sometimes.

She knows she shouldn't, because he's so off-limits she can't even describe it. But he's kind and thoughtful (and cute) and being with him is just so easy. It's impossible to spend as much time as she does with someone like that and not think about _things_ that would lose her Elena's friendship forever.

Of course, she doesn't do it. Even when Elena and Stefan are broken up, and he's smiling at her over lunch at the Grill as he tells her stories of bad hair and history and concerts and life, Caroline doesn't consider even for an instant coming on to him or kissing him.

As best she can tell, she's stuck in wanting to like Stefan, or maybe wanting to want to like Stefan. Either way, there's some wanting and some not-liking, but maybe it's all okay. Maybe Billy Crystal is wrong, and men and women can be friends without sex getting in the way, cause Stefan and Lexi were (at least according to his stories) and he says that she reminds him of Lexi.

Lexi sounds like someone she wants to be like, even after Stefan gets tired and a little drunk and blabs that Damon killed her. Lexi sounds strong and confident and loyal and friendly and beloved. Everything Caroline wants to be. Everything she's never sure how to do.

But she's learning. In bits and pieces, through the fragments she sees in the people around her, she's learning.

* * *

Caroline thinks about Matt as little as possible.

Of course, even that is way too much, because every time she sees him or hears him or (and oh boy is this ever creepy) smells him, it's a little like being punched in the stomach from sheer _wanting_.

And more often than not, as little as possible is still a hell of a lot of thinking. He invaded her life, and her heart, before she knew what hit her. And she loved (loves?) him, and maybe that's why she didn't want Stefan, because she's going to be the girl-who's-in-love-with-Matt-Donovan, not the girl-who-falls-for-Elena's-sloppy-seconds.

She manipulated him into breaking up with her, and she wishes there were some way she own that action, cause it was just as much an invasion of his head as when she compelled her mother, only worse cause at least her mother knew what was coming and agreed to it. Caroline knows that she did the right thing with Matt – she couldn't handle the confusing, overwhelming _wanting_. Now it's all changed but when she has to go to the Grill, she can't tear her eyes off him and she can't decide whether she wants him to be sad (cause that would mean he loves her too) or happy (cause then he wouldn't be sad). For all she wants to think about other things, she still sees his face behind her eyes before she falls asleep, and maybe she likes it a little bit.

Maybe Damon's got it right, then, that love and obsession aren't so different.

* * *

Years ago, Caroline would hear people talking about four-letter words. Too young to understand that they meant obscenities – hell, damn, shit, _fuck_ – she decided that all words with four letters must be bad, and she spent nearly six months talking around as many as possible, and simply omitting the rest. (It got weird, sometimes, when she had to talk about the "number after three" or the "number before ten.")

When her mother realized what was going on – after a few weeks – she'd tried to explain that it was just some four-letter words that were bad, not all of them, but it hadn't stuck. With all the stubbornness she could muster (probably even more than she can now), she diligently removed all four-letter words from her vocabulary. To achieve her goal, she would read her father's thesaurus at night, searching for ways to talk around words like "said" and "with" and, well, "like."

Eventually, her father's pleading had gotten through to her; he gave her examples of four-letter words too wonderful to be forbidden. He talked about flying a kite and reading a book, about her favorite stuffed bear and the rubber duck in her bathtub. He talked about love.

But Caroline is older now, and she's seen and done things her parents never dreamed she would – she's killed and manipulated and betrayed, broken hearts and minds to achieve her own ends. She thinks about Katherine, tearing people apart to force Stefan to love her; about Elena, torn between people she loves because having the one puts the others in danger; about her own mother, who hated her so much during those too-long days.

She curls in on herself, leaning against her headboard. Maybe love should be one of the forbidden words, dangerous and deadly.

No longer a nightly occurrence, the soft slide of her window makes her start, but before her muscles have finished their involuntary jerk, she knows who's at her window.

"Hi," he whispers. (If she weren't a vampire, she probably wouldn't have heard him.)

Then his face crumbles, and in a blink she's standing next to him and hugging him because it's _Matt_ and she can't not comfort him. He sinks to the floor under her window and she kneels next to him, stroking the back of his neck and his shoulders.

When she draws him into a proper hug, his face pressed into her shoulder, his shoulders shake and he chokes out that Elena told him everything. "Even about you," he says, "But I didn't know where else to go."

Completely at a loss for words because Matt _knows_ and he's still here crying into her shoulder, Caroline hugs him tighter and murmurs some comforting nonsense about how everything will be okay (even though it probably won't because everything's been going to hell for too long to turn around just cause one thing goes right).

A tiny part of her she's definitely _not_ listening to is happier than she can say that he's here, even if he's heartbroken about his sister and overwhelmed by the insanity that is life in Mystic Falls.

She decides that love makes you weird, shrugs it off, and kisses his cheek.


End file.
